Maintaining aspect ratio when exporting to .mov or .mp4

Maintaining aspect ratio when exporting to .mov or .mp4
by Oli Bettesworth on Aug 2, 2012 at 11:34:56 am

Hi everyone,

I'm fairly new to Final Cut and I'm having an absolute nightmare trying to get my timeline to export to Quicktime or H.264 without changing the aspect ratio.

All I want is for the final exported file to look like it does on the timeline (right of the image above), but whenever I export it's completely changed. On the left are the settings I'm using for the sequence. Why is this so difficult? Is there some glaring error I'm making, because I've tried so many different approaches and none seem to make the blind bit of difference.

Hi Oli,
Your clip is a DV PAl Anamorphic, what means 720x576 DV Anamorphic pixels
but the H264 you want to export (I guess to be played on a computer) must have Squared pixels instead of DV Anamorphic.
If you want to keep the 16x9 aspect ratio, your picture size must keep this 16 horizontal by 9 vertical relation.
1024x576 will do it, but you can choose any other value that keep that relation:
- 640x360
- 1280x720
- 480x270
- 1980x1080
....etc

If your file was not Anamorphic, then you would need to do the same, but keeping a 4x3 relation:
- 720x540
- 768x576
- 360x270
...etc
rafael